A Horizontal Thread
by Miss-Smilla
Summary: We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do / is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship / of death to carry the soul on the longest journey." - The Ship of Death, D.H. Lawrence


**Title:** A Horizontal Thread  
**Rating:** Adult.  
**Summary:** "We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do / is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship / of death to carry the soul on the longest journey."  
**Disclaimer:** Not for profit, but for fun, these are not mine.  
**Author's Notes:** "Request #1: A hurt/comfort fic where Gene comforts Alex when she seems to be having a breakdown of sorts relating to her situation/becomes ill due to her situation." Written for ladyfiresprite as a response on the Bollyknickers' Alex Drake Ficathon. I abused the prompts liberally.

* * *

**A Horizontal Thread**

* * *

'The upper darkness is heavy as the lower, / between them the little ship / is gone / she is gone.' The Ship of Death, D.H. Lawrence.

* * *

Once, when she was a little girl, she asked her teacher if God really existed. Alex received a look that was part puzzlement, part indignation. Her teacher told her that of course God existed, what a strange question, who else would have made the world? And what on earth had made her ask?

She never answered. The question was left largely unanswered. Alex went away to think about it. Alex read Darwin, Alex read Gleick, Alex read Pythagoras, Alex read Psychology at University.

In the end, Alex was a little scared of knowing anything beyond the theories.

One day, Alex was shot dead.

* * *

If there is a God, she thinks, then she is making herself in his image. The creator of her own private world.

Once she would have enjoyed analysing this, her own subconscious. A playground for theory, speculation. If she'd known that repudiation came with a mancunian accent she'd have turned to Jung for the counter-arguments in advance, but she never had time. She was setting herself tasks briskly, trying to stay ahead of the bullet.

He's still arguing as she lies here. Still. He's telling her that she daren't do—what? die? If she's God in this little London then surely she takes on the role of Judge, Jury and Executioner. She's seen no clown for weeks now. Her father is no longer calling to her, promising that they'll live in the land of Narnia for evermore. This is her subconscious and she's faced the worst and she's in control and she's decided she'll get home to Molly, so she'll not be dying now.

But she's cold. And it's getting harder to see. And her throat feels like it's closing up with tears.

He doesn't lift her at all, and she wonders how his hands can stay so warm against her skin, pressing against her and holding her closer.

She can't understand what's wrong with his voice, why it sounds so fractured and far-away. He's telling her to do something, it's really important, but somewhere tonight she forgot why she should be listening to everything Gene Hunt says.

Whatever it is, it sounds important.

It's very cold now. And she's starting to wonder what the God in this scenario really is.

* * *

She'd been feeling cold for two weeks. The moment where the car exploded, the one flash of light sucking all the heat and sound back on itself stole all the heat from her skin.

There'd been red wine for two weeks; Blue Nun on occasions. Gene's double-jointed thumb curling over the bottle like it did over her hand. It didn't warm her and he never offered to watch videos with her again, he just watched her.

Sometimes it made her furious. Her eyesight would fuzz, filling with white static. She wanted to scream like a banshee, tear his eyes apart with her fingernails. She could barely stand his sympathy; her bones itched with the desire to hurt this benevolent monstrosity who seemed to represent the sardonic voice of reason. She didn't want to listen to any more of his late-night platitudes.

Sometimes she wanted to crawl back into her dream-within-a-dream bed with him, curl up against his warmth. She'd heard his heartbeat before in a vault, she knew his breath was warm from the freezer, she was sure his hands could warm her skin. But he just watched her.

She felt judged sometimes. As if he was weighing her heart against a feather and nothing balanced-out.

He had her chasing a small-time drug dealer when she died from the cold.

* * *

Just a brief bark, one "after him!" and she was tripping down a fire escape, across an overgrown garden and into a small copse; just a routine arrest, one too many ABHs roughing-up fellow dealers.

It was midwinter. And as she ran she was lifted by the cold into the place behind her eyes, where she was aware that her body temperature was too low, her head was aching and that time had moved at a terrifying rate since she'd arrived here.

There was a spark in the outskirts of her field of vision.

Her heartbeat dropped into her stomach, and sudden warmth spread across her hips. There was a sound like whistling, off-key and high and a popcorn-burst bang, the report blooming with the blood from the hole in her abdomen.

The dealer looked terrified, he'd dropped the gun (the barrel still smoking) and was leaning against a tree, his breathing rapid and heavy. She could hear crashing in the foliage behind her (someone coming), but as she sat on the floor she was hyper-aware that his pupils had dilated and his skin was flushed over an extraordinary pallor.

She felt like she was falling, the sky rolling above her head, little shivers running out across her skin, her hands trying to hold onto the last bit of warmth as it leaked out of her.

She sees the dealer go down, a blur that looks like Ray slamming him into a tree again and again. Someone is whispering in her ear and it sounds like a prayer.

If there is a God, she thinks, then she is making herself in his image. The creator of her own private world.

* * *

Alex Drake doesn't wake up. There are times when she's there, in 1981 and times when she is not. When she is not, she can hear clinical terminology and the dripping of liquid and the creak of wood on water, all of it being sucked away from her.

When she is there she can hear Gene Hunt. For a few days she thought she could feel his hand in hers, the callus on his thumb tickling the thin skin between her thumb and her forefinger. She wanted to bat his hand away, but she couldn't move.

She feels perversely pleased that she is at his mercy.

He never talks to her. He sighs, he clears his throat, he talks to the others who visit – to Chris and Shaz, to Ray briefly, but never to her. Sometimes the room is so still that his movement, when he makes it, sounds like a gunshot.

Sometimes he snores.

She knows he is falling asleep at her bedside and that he's eating take-away and occasionally has to use the shower in her en-suite. But she is warmed slightly by the fact that he stays with her as often as possible.

When he goes to work she is not there. The light is always a little brighter and the place where she isn't a little colder when he is gone. Her eyes feel as if water is trickling into them and she can't wipe it away.

One day water trickles over her lips even when Gene is there. She flails, or tries to, but she still can't move. Her heartbeat echoes in her chest and her stomach aches until she realises he is feeding her.

* * *

She is there when he speaks. Three words, surprisingly tender against her ears; "Your heart stopped."

He clears his throat and starts again and in the pause the air around her seems to darken and vibrate. The atmosphere is close and warm and she is being driven towards something, through what feels like a small narrowing gap.

Her skin is lifting towards his warmth, and for a moment she is reassured.

"I won't—" he begins, "I can't wait forever."

The air is falling into pieces around her, and she can feel salt water on her skin, and she begins to wonder if this is it, the final answer for her. She wants to laugh and she wants to cry and the hysterics claw in her throat, because this feels nothing like bullshit tunnels and light.

"I need you to wake up, Alex"

His voice seems very close to her, so close she can feel his breath moving at the side of her head. She is being carried forwards, or upwards, the sky tumbling above her, rushing towards a surface that she'd forgotten was there all along. And she's not sure if she wants this, panicking now. She's gasping, her lungs tight and airless, her eyes burning, breath streaming from her mouth like water and she is straining, straining—

She does.

* * *

Fin.


End file.
